Tag: Early Childhood Educators

Up until now, the way I have talked (typed) about digital technology has been from the perspective of a twenty-something-year-old educator, and the views I have mostly considered are those of parents and my peers. However, I realized that for a blog that’s dedicated to a class called Children & Technology, there is one point-of-view I have not yet covered in detail: the children’s.

What do children think about digital technology? How do children see digital technology as integrating with other aspects of their lives? I believe there is a misconception that because children are digital natives, they do not think twice about the way they use digital technology in their everyday lives. Yet they do!

A study showed that when children ages twelve and under were asked to draw a picture of how they would adapt digital technology, they came up with many interesting answers. One child wanted to be able to touch, feel, and move things on a screen; another child wished for a platform that could search and provide results for things not by using text, but drawings. Many themes and concepts included virtual realities and simulations, and human-like robots and virtual companions. The researchers noted that children see digital technology as an extension of themselves, not as an add-on in the way I think of it.

In 2015, BBC Newsround sought out comments from children and young teens online regarding whether or not they thought [digital] technology helped them learn better. Surprisingly, there was a range of responses across the board, such as technology can be a distraction and encourages laziness and cheating; technology is good because it’ll be the way of the future, and technology can help improve concentration and makes knowledge more accessible. The Hechinger Report got similar responses when they conducted interviews with older children from middle-class rural backgrounds–in their opinion, while digital technology can be more fun and interactive to learn with, it can also lead to more distractions and temptations.

But what about children’s perceptions of cyber-safety?

During a pilot-study project, researchers at the Learning Science Institute Australia found that 73% of the young children interviewed said that they would tell their names and addresses to someone they knew online (i.e., a player in a game). In my experience, children consider a stranger to be a random person on the street that they have never met. However, children feel a sense of familiarity with the people they’re interacting with in their virtual worlds.

As children explore and use new technologies and apps, parents and educators should be checking in and initiating dialogues to understand how children are thinking about digital technology. Every child is unique, and every child will have their own individual opinions and needs when it comes to using digital technology.

A few weeks ago, Drew Williams, a manager from Storypark came to my Children & Technology class and gave us a presentation on Storypark–a learning stories and e-portfolios app. While Storypark does share some characteristics of the HiMama app, it is still rather distinctive. Originating from New Zealand, Storypark is founded on the belief that it takes a community to raise a child, and this is reflected in the structure of the app.

According their website, idea of Storypark is to create a secure online community to support children’s learning and development. Families and educators can privately document and share children’s growth and learning through photos, videos, stories, notes, and audio clips. Like most social media apps these days, Storypark comes with real time notifications so that users can instantly view and respond to new content.

Parents can invite anyone they choose from anywhere in the world into their virtual communities (extended family, friends, loved ones, experts or specialists, etc)–all that is needed is the app and an internet connection! Anyone who is part of the community can comment on the posts in the portfolio and feel a part of the child’s life as they share in children’s adventures.

Storypark is extremely affordable and accessible. The Family Plan (for parents and family members is absolutely free for life! The Education Plan (educators) is $0.99 per month per child, and educators can try Storypark first for a free thirty-day trial (no credit card info needed). Another small aspect that I really like is that parents can choose to keep their child’s portfolio from school or childcare once the child has left the centre, is not erased or deleted after a period of time like on most apps. Pictures from Storypark can also be used to create high-quality personalized photo books.

As an educator, I really like Storypark it’s so easy to use and interact with! It would certainly make the documentation process a lot more enjoyable as there is so much interaction and involvement happening with the families, which can be much harder to achieve with traditional, non-digital methods of documentation. As an aunt to a preschooler living across the continent, I would absolutely love it if her family used Storypark–this is the app long distance relative have dreamed of.

A few weeks ago, Steven Bonnay, a representative from HiMama came to my Children & Technology course and introduced us to an app called HiMama. Now, I have been in many childcare centers – five out of my six field placement across George Brown College and Ryerson University took place in childcare and Early Learning centers all over Toronto – and not once was it suggested that there was another way to do the piles of necessary documentation any other way but the traditional paper and pencil method that just takes away so much time from interacting with the children. So to me, an app like HiMama is nothing short of revolutionary – a real game changer especially for the up and coming generation of ECEs that are already so used to using technology in almost every other aspect of our lives. I don’t think it’s too much of a leap to bridge it into our professional world, it is 2017, after all.

What HiMama does is provide early childhood educators with a user-friendly and accessible app to share information and memories with parents and caregivers, as well as record observations and documentations. It works by linking parents and educators together in real-time so parents can receive pictures, videos, and updates on their digital devices about their children’s day as it happens (feeding, sleeping, diapering, activities, and more). HiMama was specifically designed with the unique needs of a childcare center in mind, and this is evident in the engaging and easy to navigate interface that allows educators to do their daily documentations and observations quickly and efficiently.

This really helps bridge the gap between what happens at home and what happens in childcare, as well as foster stronger relationships between parents and educators. When there’s a lot of paperwork involved, some things can (and do) fall through the cracks sometimes in all the hectic hustle and bustle of pick-ups and drop-offs, but I think HiMama works to both empower educators and help them become more accountable at the same time.